The official site of author Don Bissett and the Nathan Parker crime novel book series

How Much Would/Wood....

A lot of wood is being chucked in Ohio and surrounding states. Because the emerald ash borer is wiping out huge stands of native ash trees.

Gazing at a forest, I find it easy to pick out the dead ash: their leaf-less skeleton limbs dot the horizon. If only typos in a manuscript were as easy to spot as those ash borer victims poking up through the forest canopy.

But, alas, typos tend to be more elusive: that stray comma, the missing quotation mark, an extra space between words, or the wrong there/their/they're. Ware/wear/where are they hiding? Finding all of them is sometimes just to/two/too much to bare/bear.

Digressing a bit, let's look on the positive side of disappearing ash trees. We did see more woodpeckers in the yard: they apparently developed an appetite for ash borers, though perhaps too late to save the species. There are fewer leaves to rake in the fall. And all the dead trees have been a boon to the tree-trimming and firewood industries. Mounds of wood are being chucked and stacked for winter heating, such as the huge piles created from the 23 trees that were cut out of the neighbor's yard.

So, before the winter would/wood-burning frenzy begins, whose/who's going to clean out the fireplace flew/flu/flue?